When APIs fight

Well ahead of the deadline posed by Google Translate API to stop working, we were finally able to compile this new release. This one followed a long period of problems that were presented by the older version, mainly because of the fact that Google decided to pose limitations on usage before their deadline which caused the previous versions support requests to surge to new heights. The Google change also triggered an API limit in the Bing translation API, since users were switching engines, which overloaded the Transposh hard coded API key for Bing.

However, we survived this period to provide you with our latest and greatest version. This version fixes these problems be providing a bypass (Proxy for Google and temp keys for MSN) and it also allows you to use your own key directly (thanks to Randy from spyware help center for providing us with his key for testing) which will take precedence over those other methods. While doing this we were able to dramatically improve the infrastructure of the plugin, changing the way AJAX calls were performed to a method that is native to WordPress  (e.g. if your admin page works, it should probably work as well). While doing that we were able to reduce javascript code needed for the backend while allowing the translate all feature to work much faster (and supporting Apertium too!).

At this point we had a solid version, which seemed like a good thing to release, but no, we had to have some other features in, so we finally decided to tackle the issue of multiple widgets support (and title selection too, yippee!). Seems quite straight forward? but no, this caused a major rewrite of our widget infrastructure as well. Actually improving it quite drastically with changing the way css was added, and the way the widgets notified the servers of change in language (we now avoid a useless POST call to the server). While writing that we were lucky enough to stumble upon a PHP5.3 to PHP5.2 incompatibility issue with a set of other problems which held our release back another week. We want to thank the many users that have put up with our beta releases and helped us find problems that were hidden under layers of code and complexity.

We also took this opportunity to change our terms slightly, if you are displaying Google ads from AdSense on your translated pages, we will take 1/1000 of that space for use with our own adsense code, so if Transposh is helping you generate a revenue of $10K you will be buying us coffee! So thanks! To clarify things a bit, we don’t create additional ad space on your page, and we won’t insert any ads or change your layout, if you have no ads, we do nothing. If you think that this is asking too much, you may simply delete our plugin, whistle a soft tune, and be on your way. If you want a commercial license, we don’t sell them yet, but they’ll probably cost more.

Other changes to this version include:

•  Added Catalan and Hindi support for Bing – speaks for itself.
•  Dropdown widget improved css – it actually looks much better now.
•  Support for Memcached – if APC and other opcode caches were too much for you, now you may use memcached and have a lot of fun.
•  Better 404 page handling (don’t create new links to non-existing pages) – meaning the google crawler will hassle your site less.
•  Fix caching on rackspace cloudsites – they had x-cache installed for opcode cache, but with no user memory, which caused a surge in logfiles – now fixed.
•  Many more minor fixes – We might count those, but we don’t have enough fingers.
•  Turkish Translation by Semih Yeşilyurt.

We hope you’ll enjoy this version, and as always, waiting for your comments, ideas, suggestions and flames.

P.S – Tested on WordPress 3.3 beta4, works great.

Support for 5 more Indic languages

One day after summer has officially begun in the northern hemisphere, we are proud to present version 0.7.5 of our plugin. This version adds support for the new languages that were announced as supported today by Google Translate - Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.

Before rushing to add those languages to your blog, please be reminded that those languages use an ajax proxy in order to work correctly, which means that they create a load on your server upon the first encounter with a new translation string (forcing it to fetch the translation from Google). So the choice is yours, but you have been notified…

Further more this version adds the option not to override the default locale with Transposh’s default language, this behavior (new on 0.7.4) allowed MU users to have admin pages in their language, but on the other hand annoyed users that wanted to manage the site in a language different than their default, so now this is configurable.

We have also improved the translation UI, the next and previous buttons now save changes done, and the dialog will not be re-centered upon clicking these buttons.

We hope you’ll enjoy this version.

What's next for Transposh?

Yesterday we have released version 0.6.7. This version includes a few minor fixes, both for the ability to translate more phrases when google  does not detect the source language correctly, and for the ability to include direct links to static files (those will cause a 301 redirect to occur).

However what is more important is that we have finally been able to cleanup our milestones, and set the gears in full motion for the next major version of Transposh – which will be 0.7. The focus of this version will be a major improvement to the translator frontend interface, and we have put the requirements for this online in our development site at http://trac.transposh.org/wiki/milestones/0.7. Everyone that wants to influence the next version is welcomed to edit and comment on that wiki page or create a ticket for us. We will review each request and try to fit it into the schedule.

On some other news, we would like to thank Colnect, our new sponsor for contributing a new vps for Transposh which will hopefully make the site go a bit faster. We have also attempted to use cloudflare to improve our service, however we are having mixed results with that, so if you are having any problems accessing this site, please let us know.

Last on the agenda, an alpha version of our plugin for blogger is on the works, if you have a site on blogger and want to add translation to it, just contact us.

Matt and Me

This time we are joined by nobody else than Matt Mullenweg, the creator of the WordPress platform.

In the following completely fake interview, Matt will help us all understand what is new in 0.6.4:

Ofer: Hello Matt, how are you today?
Matt: I have never been so excited about a point 0.01 release of a plugin before!
Ofer: Why is that?
Matt: I think that you are finally getting the spirit of wordpress in this release
Ofer: Am I?
Matt: Yes, you are finally integrating with the platform instead of hacking around it, I really like the fact that you finally took the time and made your plugin interface and administration pages translatable, and since you are that good, you get a free blog!
Ofer: Gee, thanks! now how will I get other people to make translations of my plugin?
Matt: Just ask your users to do that, I am sure you’ll give them credit.
Ofer: Tell them the whole thing about poedit and stuff?
Matt: Come on, as I am always saying, there’s a plugin for that! And you should probably know since you translated it yourself and contributed some minor fixes.
Ofer: You mean codestyling localization?
Matt: Yes, that’s the one, anyone can use it. But I have a question for you
Ofer: For me?
Matt: Yes, why didn’t you use Transposh for doing that?
Ofer: Didn’t really see the reason, as there’s already a great plugin for it, why replicate?
Matt: I see that you are finally getting it.
Ofer: Getting what?
Matt: The spirit of wordpress, sharing, caring, open source, and free love.
Ofer: I sure hope so, thank you so much for being with us.
Matt: Thank you, next time, please interview me on a major feature, if I had to do fake interviews for every minor plugin release in wordpress, I’ll never have free time to actually improve wordpress and come to wordcamps.
Ofer: Will take notice, thanks again!

Well, thanks Matt for joining us, some features also added to this version is the Latin translation added (with google translation support), three new languages added to Bing translate. The ability to disable the gettext integration where it causes problems, with some other fixes.

As always – we hope you will enjoy this version

After a short debate we have decided to give Yiddish the european union flag because of two reasons, one – the language originated there, not in any specific country and second – the flag does not stand for any specific country in a similar way to the language which can not be connected to any country. If anyone has better suggestions, we are open to hear them.

This release also follows a few weeks of silence, in which we have been quietly thinking and discussing new features, which we hope we’ll be able to release soon, any help and feedback will not only be appreciated but will also help us deliver a better product.

The results it gives are quite different from the ones you get from Google translate, sometimes better, sometimes worse.

A minor setback for default activation is that this service is still in beta and an invite is required, We have a very small amount we can share so if you want one, just comment on this post, first comes – first served basis.

Also – we haven’t activated Bing translator as a default automatic translator yet and we would like to hear your opinions on that. If enough people request this feature, we will put more effort into enable this in the coming release. In the meanwhile – you are welcomed to test this feature on this site, just start translating and use the Bing suggest button.

Today we release a new version that adds support for two features. The first one is the ability to get translated RSS feeds, all the user needs to do is subscribe to the feed on the translated page.
The second feature is an improvement to the translation interface which allows the translator to get a suggestion from a computerized tool (currently working with google translate) and use it as a helper for the translation process.

We are still very open to your suggestions, just contact us.

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Update – 08/03 – Anyone experiencing installation problems, until we release the next version, please install version 0.0.2 first and than upgrade to 0.0.3